


just to hear the nightbird singin'

by philthestone



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, Sort Of, i dont know enough abt american states to make this fic more detailed than it is, on a roadtrip to resolve incomprehensible cold war conspiracy theories re ur biological parents, or cars for that matter. i dont know anything about cars, plot is as always a social construct, sometimes its just u ur sister ur weird friend and his dog, this is chaotic but not anymore than the original trilogy was i dont think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:41:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28542714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: Midway through July, Luke gets the cockamamie idea to get in a car and go find their missing-in-action, disappeared-many-moons-ago father.“Biologicalfather,” Leia says, at the same time Luke says, “I don’t think people use the word cockamamie anymore, Leia,” in that way of his that’s just earnest enough that she doesn’t feel the impulse to hit, but also he’s taking the piss, a little bit.“Ugh,” she says. It’s like a million degrees outside. She knows Luke’s gonna beg Han into driving them, which means no AC, and she still has RA work for her stupid internship. None of theirpeershave to deal with recently-emerged family dirty laundry-slash-evidence that maybe their dad was actually some kind of ex-CIA military caught up in a shady government-mobster conspiracy, and not the deadbeat schmuck one originallyassumed, Leia thinks."Fine.""I knew you'd come round eventually," Luke says, grinning.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker & Han Solo, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Obi-Wan Kenobi & Luke Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 33
Kudos: 144





	just to hear the nightbird singin'

**Author's Note:**

> dont ask me to explain this bc i cant really?? i just embraced the lack of genuine plot progression in favor of fun original trio bonding. the chronology doesnt really follow the ot, so its more of a general au in that sense, but i did try to throw in as many references as possible. i hope u have as much fun catching them as i did writing them!
> 
> title is from stevie nicks and reviews do my heart good. stay safe guys <3

Luke takes a summer job at a taco stand to help them get through sophomore year. It’s a dinky thing, with the menu written on cardboard in poor black Sharpie handwriting. But it’s summer in Arizona so it has a good umbrella awning jutting out the top. Leia uses this as shade whilst she hands out pamphlets advertising anti-ICE protests as a specific and targeted middle finger to her advanced politics of law professor.

“This is technically private property, sister,” says Luke’s new and very irritating coworker. She recognizes him from Tarkin’s class, though — back row, but close enough to her that she can see him frown at the bastard at all the right moments.

Also, she is not above admitting to possession of eyes. Floppy brown hair, dumb scar on chin, etcetera. _Tall_ , in a way that has her flushing irritably.

“Han, right?”

“Uh -- yeah.”

He’s kind of cute. 

“Fuck you,” says Leia anyway. 

Han takes a pamphlet. By June they’re making out in the back by the garbage bins.

Unfortunately for Leia, that is not where the summer ends. 

Midway through July, Luke gets the cockamamie idea to get in a car and go find their missing-in-action, disappeared-many-moons-ago father.

“ _Biological_ father,” Leia says, at the same time Luke says, “I don’t think people use the word cockamamie anymore, Leia,” in that way of his that’s just earnest enough that she doesn’t feel the impulse to hit, but also he’s taking the piss, a little bit.

“ _Biological_ ,” Leia insists one more time. She steals a bite of his convenience store cheese popcorn. The popcorn bag gives a flimsy plastic-aluminum squeak. “I have an internship. College doesn’t have summer break like high school does, Luke.”

He frowns at her, just slightly reproving. 

Like, _I know, Leia_. 

Like, _give me some more credit than that, Leia_.

Which. Well. Okay. She feels a little bit bad. She tries to focus on this, and not the recently-emergent evidence that their dad did not leave them and/or their mother to the mercies of the elements wholly of his own volition. Signs do not point to any _conclusive_ other alternatives, but Luke thinks they should go check, just to make sure. Like in case he’s being held hostage by an underground network of Russian mobsters or something. 

Leia would say people don’t _get_ held _hostage_ in the _modern day_ , but she’s studying global politics, so she can’t say that.

“Ugh,” she says, instead. It’s like a million degrees outside. She _knows_ Luke’s gonna beg Han into driving them, which means no AC. All the way to -- what, Boston? Eventually?

“D.C., actually,” says Luke. He’s got that dumb grin of his going. “I knew you’d come around eventually.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” says Leia again.

Luke somehow keeps a hold on the half-finished popcorn bag until they’re halfway up the highway to Page.

“Literally, who names a town _Page_ ,” says Leia, eyeing the honest-to-God paper map Luke’s holding skeptically. The Falcon’s GPS system is on the fritz, even though Leia maintains it didn’t exist in the first place, because Han’s awful van’s been around since probably the sixties. 

“It’s our ticket into Utah,” Luke says. 

“Hey, kid.” This is Han. “Stop feedin’ Chewie your chemical corn.”

“I told him that hours ago,” Leia says, pushing her visor back against her forehead. It’s already so hot in this goddamn car. “I said, it’ll make him sick.”

Chewie whines dolefully from the front seat. 

“Yes you _will_ puke all over the dashboard,” Han says. “Don’t look at me like that!”

Leia huffs a sigh and leans back against the scruffy velvetish upholstery of the van’s backseat. Up until three days ago, the most she knew about her birth parents was that her mother worked in politics, like Bail did, and she worked in politics with a _vehemence_. Leia, also, works in politics with a vehemence. Maybe too much -- otherwise a bona fide fascist like Professor Tarkin wouldn’t hate her so much -- but she always gets a weird feeling, when she thinks of Padme Amidala. The old photos from the eighties make her look so elegant and put together.

 _Everyone looked elegant in the eighties_ , Luke said, the one time she brought this up. Leia’s not so sure about that, but she didn’t fight him on it, either.

“I still think,” she says, “that this is a --”

“Cockamamie idea?” supplies Luke, not looking up from his map.

“Did I say that? That’s not what I said.”

“Han, tell my sister no one uses the word _cockamamie_ anymore.” 

She watches as Han flicks his dumb sunglasses down his nose just so he can look at her through the rearview mirror. 

“I’m going to swan dive onto the billion degree highway,” she tells him. “Right through this terrible window that never rolls up.”

“No one says cockamamie anymore, sweetheart.”

“Oh, for the _love_ of --”

“C’mon, Leia, we’re having fun!” 

Luke follows this by upending the rest of the popcorn bag into his wide-open trap and misjudging exactly how much popcorn was left in it. Leia glares at him all through plucking pieces straight off of the floor and putting them directly into her mouth. It’s an old power move, from even before they realized they were siblings; Luke has the good grace to look a little bit intimidated.

Here is their list of potential alternatives to willful abandonment:

  1. Held hostage by the Russian mob
  2. Put into Witsec, courtesy of aforementioned Russian mob entanglements
  3. Was part of one of those elaborate tax fraud schemes where some poor schmuck is convinced his kids died in childbirth because someone’s sister or aunt is crazy; is currently in Maui selling baseball caps to tourists
  4. _Is_ the Russian mob
  5. CIA??????
  6. Gaslit by the treasury secretary of the United States



“The treasury secretary? Seriously?” 

Han finds this whole thing more amusing than legitimate, which is something Leia can’t decide is more or less annoying than it should be. They’ve hit traffic just outside Durango, which is bad, because Luke says they need to put a bit more space between themselves and the taco stand. Apparently it has connections to a local drug lord.

“And you started working there _anyway_?” Leia wants to say, but doesn’t. Luke grew up in these parts. It’d have been his turn to offer her patient condescension.

So they’re making this list, as a distraction.

“Mom and dad both worked in government,” Luke says stubbornly, clutching the notepad he’s pulled out of Leia’s nice leather schoolbag with defiance. “ _Fancy_ government. That’s what Aunt Beru said.”

“Yeah, and the crazy hermit said your old man was dead. I dunno if our information is exactly reliable, kid.” 

Han has tried fixing the AC, which only means that there is now hot stale air blasting directly into their eyeballs, instead of seeping gently in through the window like it was originally. There’s an itchy, willful part of Leia unrelated to the sweatiest parts of her bicycle shorts sticking to the fabric seat beneath her that wants to ask if he’s got any Stevie Nicks to play. That might drown out everything else. Only, revealing music taste means vulnerability, and that is a whole ‘nother kind of itchy. So she says, instead,

“Luke might have a point.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Luke says, though he looks a bit startled that she’s actually agreed with him.

“You ain’t serious,” Han says.

Leia digs her knees into the back of the driver’s seat, just to be annoying. 

“Tarkin spent a whole lecture listing that guy’s virtues. That means he can’t be anything less than an asshole. Also, I did some digging -- definitely some super shady business during the Cold War. And Padme Amidala’s lover was definitely ex-military.”

“So that’s our most likely option,” Luke says, pointedly ignoring Leia’s equally pointed word-choice. God -- now she feels _bad_ again. She digs her knee into the seat back one more time and reaches over silently to squeeze Luke’s hand.

He squeezes back. 

“ _Gaslit by the treasury secretary of the U.S._ ,” Han repeats. But he doesn’t say, _no, you’re both crazy_. Leia figures by this point they’ve all reached some sort of mutual understanding, that they’re in this regardless of misplaced marbles. Luke thinks their dad was psychologically abused by government officials; Han talks to his dog like it’s got real sentience. 

As if to prove this point, Chewie makes a prolonged yowling noise. 

“No I am _not_ playing that classical crap you like,” Han says. “There’s a Nicks cassette in the glove compartment. Some of us actually have taste, you big furball.”

It’s still unbearably hot. This is still a stupid idea. Their list is written in crappy glitter gel pen. But Leia’s shoulders relax, just a bit.

In a gas station in Kansas Leia starts thinking of the _Wizard of Oz_. Like maybe this whole adventure will turn out to be a big trick in the end. Maybe Luke’s just naively got his hopes up, as he does, and in actuality they’re some of those people who have to be content never knowing their real origins their whole lives and one day they’ll have kids of their own and realize some never identified genetic issue has been foisted onto them from beyond the proverbial grave. 

Leia loved her adoptive parents; she almost feels like she shouldn’t _be_ here.

But that’s also a lie. Luke can tell, which is something he’s always been good at, even BDS. 

_Before Discovery of Siblinghood_. Most people don’t _fortuitously_ end up at the same backwater highschool in Buttcrack Nowhere, Northern Arizona, just in time to conveniently discover that their long-lost twin sits two seats in front of them in AP calc and has so much hair it’s hard to see over her really quite short, actually, head. 

That’s what Luke says, anyway.

“Top-of-head bun is a _practical solution_ to long hair,” Leia mutters, pressing her sweaty back into the rough concrete of the convenience store building’s side, such that the place where the hem of her tank top’s riding up feels the dull prickle of abrasion.

“Uh huh,” Luke says. She half expects him to say something about Divine Intervention, because he’s been getting really into pre-industrial Middle-Eastern philosophy lately. Ben left him his entire crappy apartment’s worth of second hand books before he died, and wasn’t _that_ suspicious, Leia thinks. Not the religion books -- three house fires, all conveniently traced back to people Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa cared about. Maybe that’s why they’re on this cockamamie road trip. She’s not studying politics for nothing.

But Luke doesn’t mention any of that. Instead, he says, “I told Han to get those sour gummies you like.”

Han’s inside arguing with the cashier about gas prices. She’s pretty sure no one past the canyon range is chill with that kind of belligerent bartering, but Han refuses to give it up, and it’s not quite embarrassing yet. She watches Luke adjust his faded bucket hat, which he’s owned since before eleventh grade probably, and scratch his nose serenely. 

“Really?” she says.

“Yeah.”

“Thanks, Luke.”

As far as lost marbles go, Leia’s are probably the most complicated of the three.

“You know I’ve got your back,” Luke says, with his farmboy grin.

“Yeah,” she says, and is surprised by how nice the realization feels.

They crash overnight with Han’s old highschool friend near Topeka, in a fancy condo Han and Luke don’t quite know what to do with that Leia thinks privately must be the tallest building in all of the central States. The taco stand drug dealers catch up with them around the Missouri border, and Leia experiences the unique thrill of knocking a guy out with Luke’s old baseball bat, the one he says used to be their dad’s. Chewie gets attacked by bats outside a Denny’s parking lot while they try to avoid a state trooper who probably won’t like three college students loitering on his proverbial turf. In a Walmart in the middle of nowhere, Farmland, an errant two-year-old latches onto Luke’s leg and doesn’t let go for a full thirteen minutes. It keeps babbling in toddler Spanish and has the cutest Dumbo ears Leia’s ever seen, and they panic only a little before finding what must be its dad in the frozen foods aisle looking like he’s having the longest goddamn day of his life. 

They get lost sometime on the third day, because Luke’s terrible at reading maps, so they park the Falcon by an empty corn field, spread sleeping bags on the lumpy grass, and play Stevie Nicks as Han tries to fix the GPS. 

It only sort of works; whatever programming he and Luke override it with is fancy enough to give it personality but shitty enough that it’s now suffering from some kind of generalized anxiety disorder.

“We didn’t give it _anxiety_ ,” Luke says, as Han stubbornly thumbs in their vague destination of _Washington D.C., maybe_ and declares any bugs are entirely Luke’s fault; the code they used was one he found at Ben’s old place, another one of their dad’s old things. The USB was wrapped in tape and had _PT-C3P0_ scribbled over it in the world’s worst chicken scratch handwriting. 

Fitting, Leia supposes, that he can screw them over like this on a literal _quest to rescue_ _him_.

“ _There is a one in two hundred and twelve chance that your next turn will be incorrect,_ ” says the GPS. “ _Oh, dear_.”

Luke grimaces. Han groans dramatically and flops back against their sleeping bags, face-up to the blue-black sky. Chewie, who is somehow looking dignified on his back with his tongue hanging out, _ruffs_ at it disapprovingly.

“Seriously,” Leia says. 

It’s not cold at night, not when they’re still this far South, but the weather’s a lot more humid than the desert was. When Leia looks from side to side, all she can see is rippling farmland. They’ve turned the flashlight off, so it feels even bigger than it is; it stretches into the horizon, abuzz with cicadas and smelling of Earth. Like a reminder that life, _everything_ maybe, is so much more than they are. 

She shoves her feet back into her hiking boots and drags her sleeping back over the gravel, squeezing it between Han and Luke, and settles back down. She doesn’t -- _want_ anything, exactly, and doesn’t say anything when Han rests a loose hand over her t-shirt covered shoulder. They listen in silent resignation as the GPS continues prophesying imminent doom via errant road directions.

“Shut _up_ , Threepio,” Luke says.

But as far as roadtrips go, it isn’t the worst it could be.

She moves to shotgun once they make it to just outside Springfield. It’s the middle of the day, but Luke’s fast asleep in the back with Chewie draped over him like a weird shag-carpet blanket and Leia’s just had a coffee -- shotgun rules are _you stay awake and don’t mess with the music selection_ \-- so she’s all sorts of jittery.

Han’s profile is frustratingly handsome, even when he’s been driving for four straight hours and smells terrible. His fingers tap on the wheel to some invisible tune and his cheeks are a bit flushed because of their MIA air conditioning. She decides she has to remind their little company to find a motel to crash at tonight, lest they start forgetting normal hygiene habits. Her hair needs a wash, anyway, or it’ll never be untangled again. 

She leans back in her seat. One elbow props against the passenger door. She says,

“Would you kiss me right now if Luke wasn’t in the backseat?”

Han’s eyebrows go right up. It’s cloudy outside, like summer is when it’s going to rain. They keep passing the same kind of bush. It’s driving Leia a little nuts.

“You should know I take road safety real seriously, sweetheart.”

“Bullshit,” Leia says, even though she _does_ know. “But if road safety wasn’t an issue.”

“Is this you tryin’ to be coy?” Han asks. His sunglasses are pushed up over his forehead; it makes his hair stick up all sorts of stupid ways, but she can see his eyes. They’re warm and hazel and glinting with mischief. “‘Cause you’re really bad at it, for the record.”

“Pot, kettle.”

“I would ninety-nine percent rather be kissing your neck than driving right now, Leia. Happy?”

She ignores the use of her given name, which precludes Han’s recent and irritating ability to preternaturally know when something’s wrong with her. Nothing’s _wrong_ , Leia thinks. Outside of like, the obvious -- but that’s been wrong for a few years now, and anyway, Luke’s in the same boat. They’re all in the same boat. Van. Whatever.

On this post-loss seat-of-their-pants adventure that involves so many unknowns it’s almost a farce. Everyone -- all _normal_ people -- lose family. But _they’re_ going to _rescue_ their _father_. It’s almost as comical as that time they tried to join the Phoenix teacher’s union picket line out of solidarity for Ben, only Luke got them lost and nearly drove them into someone’s backyard pool.

It’s easier to think about it like that. Like it’s a fairy tale adventure, or a joke. 

“ _Ninety-nine_?” asks Leia. “What the hell happened to the one percent?”

“Well, I could be kissin’ places other than your neck.” 

Okay, Leia thinks -- _okay_. 

“ _There are at least six accidents in the next two miles ahead of you,”_ Threepio informs them helpfully. “ _I really would not go in that direction if I were you. Of course, I have never understood the decision making of human beings. Perhaps you_ want _to be in danger.”_

“Shut up,” she says. 

“Me, or the Professor?” says Han.

“Whatever, hotshot.” Leia breathes out thinly through her nose. “We need to stop at a motel tonight.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You good to drive another few hours?” 

Rhetorical; Han doesn’t let anyone else drive this junk pile.

“Sure, princess.”

She huffs. She wants to ask something mean, like _Why are you still here?_ It’s not like he’s actually getting much out of this thing, because Luke has no money and all of Leia’s college funds are wrapped up in a GIC. Also, she’s pretty sure his van might break down on them halfway there. So like, lose-lose-lose for him.

She’s glad he is, though. _Here_. She can admit that.

“Spit it out,” Leia says.

Han doesn’t take the bait, which is very unlike him. Instead, he says,

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Uh huh. You know you and Luke don’t have to get the same thing outta this trip.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “What do you mean.”

“Look, I’m just sayin’. Maybe we find your dad, maybe we don’t. Maybe he really is part of the world’s wackiest Russian conspiracy, whatever. Maybe he’s just a schmuck. That doesn’t mean you don’t get to take _anything_ out of this trip.” 

They pass another of that same awful bush. She unclips her seatbelt and turns to look at him properly -- “ _Road_ safety,” Han groans -- and she remembers, weirdly, that he’s a bit older than she and Luke are. He’s finally doing his degree, engineering but he’s taking the same shitty elective as her maybe solely through Luke’s newfangled Divine Intervention ideas, who knows -- and she’s always refrained from asking, because it’s none of her business and the taco stand drug scene kind of spoke for itself. But _sometimes_ he’ll say stuff like this and she’ll feel momentarily that he knows a bit more about the world than she does. _Sometimes_. Mostly he’s the same kind of moron as the rest of them.

“Sure,” Leia echoes.

“You’re not forgetting your parents by lookin’ for your other parents, Leia,” Han says, more gently than she’s heard him say anything so far, and then doesn’t bother turning on his signal before merging off the highway and into the parking lot of the world’s most deserted rest stop. Leia can see why; its signage is a bad cartoon of some giant kind of worm, or something. She grabs his hand over the gear shift and half-expects him to actually kiss her neck, but he goes for her temple instead, and sort of just stays there for a bit. Leia lets him.

“You guys okay?” Luke mumbles from the backseat, after a long moment of silence. His voice is muffled and sleep-slurred.

“Yeah,” Han says, and turns the car back on.

They get a motel room before they hit Cincinnati. Han says it should take them about another day to get to D.C., and then allows her to bully him into showering without her. Leia doesn’t have time for any funny business; she has to wash her hair.

She’s toweling it dry with one of Luke’s still clean t-shirts when she steps onto the balcony. Luke’s already there, fiddling with that dumb List they made the second day. The notebook is covered in waterstains and the ink has gotten smeared, and it has a weird brown smudge in the corner from when Leia baseball batted a taco stand thug and blood was involved. Their motel room is just high enough that they can’t see the horizon over the edge of the strip. But they can see the sky -- softening pinks and oranges and purples, and the faint outline of the moon way far out. Luke’s looking at it now, quieter than he’s been the whole trip.

She pads over in her bare feet and sits on the floor with him. It’s cool under her butt, which is only covered by her flimsy pajama shorts. Luke’s in a ratty _Lars Farms_ t-shirt and his boxers, and shivering a bit. He grew _up_ in a desert, Leia thinks -- not like her. Cincinnati is cold for him, probably. 

She scootches over and presses into his side.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hi,” Luke says, offering her a small quirk of a smile. He taps their pen against the balcony railing. In the dim twilight, his dirty blond hair looks darker, smudgier. _Almost_ brown, like hers. It’s been so weird, finding a person that’s got all these secret parts of her hidden away inside him like a blueprint. She’s never felt _known_ like this, before, and she’s talking about a guy who unironically wears those dollar store garbage bag ponchos as a raincoat. 

Luke says,

“I’m sorry I dragged you with me on this, Leia.”

She blinks, damp t-shirt hovering in midair.

“What?”

“I mean --” He frowns again -- “I know thinking about our birth parents bothers you. I shouldn’t have forced you to come, and I -- it’s probably all a wild goose chase, anyway. I mean, Russian mobs? CIA? Come on, Leia. I know it sounds stupid.”

 _Like I’m not coping with things very well_. 

That’s something Leia had admitted to him, at the end of highschool. _I feel like I’m not coping with things very well, Luke_. Her therapist would have encored her emotional progress on that one, if Leia had bothered to keep a therapist.

Past the open screen door behind them, she can hear the faint sounds of Han getting out of the shower, and the muffled _thump_ and accompanying swearing that mean he’s probably tripped over Chewie, who is napping blissfully in the middle of the bathroom doorway. From the distant highway, a car horn honks. 

“Luke Skywalker,” she says, in a voice that makes her feel almost like she is just realizing this herself. “You listen to me. You are my _brother_ , and this is important to you, so I am happy to be here. We could turn back right now and none of this would have been stupid, because we did it together. Got it?”

Luke looks up at her at the same time the blurry shape of a shooting star streaks across the sky. 

He’s grinning that farmboy grin of his.

“Yeah?”

“ _Obviously_ yeah. Now c’mon, I’ll go get you Han’s jacket from inside the car. You’re all goosepimply, because you grew up in Satan’s --”

“No one says goosepimply anymore, Leia.”

“Bite me,” she says, and takes his hand so they can stand and troop back inside, together.

**Author's Note:**

> for those of u wondering Stressed Man In Walmart was indeed din djarin. was that at all relevant to the plot? no. did i shoehorn it in anyway? of course 
> 
> hope u enjoyed!


End file.
